Particle Data Platform
Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley

This Venture Investor's Best Advice: "Sell the Wind, Not the Sailboat"

3/4/202657 min

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://linktr.ee/ryan\_hanley

You're building a world-changing product.

You've obsessed over every feature, every line of code, every pixel. Your sailboat is perfect.

So why isn't anyone buying it?

Because you're selling the wrong thing.

Chris Van Dusen is a venture investor who has built and sold multiple 8-figure companies. He's seen thousands of pitches. He knows why most founders fail.

And he's about to give you the one piece of advice that changes the entire...

Clips

Humane Takes Controlling Stake
Sell Me The Wind
Do You Need The Pain?
Mat Time To Mastery
Detach Your Investing Emotions
Contrarian Calm Through Manias

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Speaker 00:00

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  2. Chris Van Dusen· Guest0:13

    Are you an inch wide and a mile deep, or are you a mile wide and an inch deep in what you're gonna be u-utilizing the investment dollars for? When I sit down with a founder, a big red flag is who specifically is this product solution whatever for? And they go, "Everyone."

  3. Ryan Hanley· Host0:31

    Hmm.

  4. Chris Van Dusen· Guest0:31

    And I go, "Then no one will want it." Most great entre-entrepreneurs have some carnal knowledge, an endemic audience that they are trying to solve for. [upbeat music] One of our portfolio companies just had a huge announcement today, uh, so I've been working on that all morning.

  5. Ryan Hanley· Host0:56

    Okay.

  6. Chris Van Dusen· Guest0:57

    Uh, so AI.io, we led their A round, and, uh, Humane, which is one of the largest AI companies- Yeah ... backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, just came in and took the controlling stake in the company to build their sports tech division.

  7. Ryan Hanley· Host1:14

    Wow.

  8. Chris Van Dusen· Guest1:14

    So huge, huge news. Um- Yeah ... I'm on the board of that company. Uh, and it's a, it's a very, very big deal- Yeah ... for launching, uh, Humane Sport and, uh, bringing that to market. So more of just, uh,

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